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MacBook Pro using way too much CPU?

O

obito94

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 9, 2014
1
0
Hello, I am using a mid 2010macbook pro 13.3 inch. I'm running mountain lion (mac osx 10.8.5). This computer has worked fine for me for years but recently there's been some random high CPU usage. For example, I open up google chrome and randomly I use 58% of my CPU just scrolling up and down the page ( this is after I did all available options to make "google chrome helper" not eat up all of my cpu) Even with nearly everything disabled in chrome my CPU can hit 90%+ going on youtube.

At first I was like "maybe chrome is being stupid?" But apparently every browser I use does this. Firefox, safari, etc. All exceed normal cpu usage whenever I do a simple task.

I opened minecraft once and my cpu hits 75-80% while hitting 82 degrees celsius while my fan is hitting 6200RPM

I also noticed something as simple as HP Printer software using 150% of my cpu...I'd like to say it was using infinite percentage because the CPU usage just infinitely kept going up until I rebooted my computer. (I couldn't quit the aplication, the computer was slugging so badly)

imovie for some reason always uses 150%+, but I think that's normal.

I think my computer started doing all of this crazy **** after I updated to mountain lion. Would I be right in this guess or would I be wrong?

I feel like this is some type of CPU wear or CPU damage, but I'm not sure.

Does anyone know what's going on? I'd be willing to provide more information about my computer if asked.

Just to specify some hardware I have

2.4GHz dual core processor
4GB RAM DDR3 1067mhz
1TB hard drive SSD
 
L

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,202
19,063
What is your CPU usage when not scrolling or doing anything? Scrolling can be a quite intensive operation. I cannot judge whether 60% CPU are normal in that case because I don't have the laptop here (but given that it's a Core2Duo, it does not appear that unrealistic to me). Minecraft and other games always have high CPU usage due to the way they are programmed.

Are you running Mavericks? If not, I'd recommend you to upgrade and see whether it makes it better.
 
h9826790

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,614
8,546
Hong Kong
I didn't own a MacBook Pro now, but I have a Mac Pro, and manage few MacBooks and iMacs for my friends and relatives.

For a dual core processor Mac, I think that's quite normal. When I use my Mac to do some simple job, it's load average usually between 1-2. That mean it can fully load 1-2 cores, which means 100 - 200% CPU usage in your machine.

Although my Mac Pro is running as a server, it has a 3.46GHz CPU. So, let's say ML is 30% less resource hog than Mavericks (purely hypothesis). You will still need that CPU usage to run those basic task.

Also, if your Mac getting hot, it will thermal throttling itself. That will decrease the CPU clock, which is a indirect way to increase the CPU usage as well. (e.g. 50% in 2.4G = 100% in 1.2G)
 
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